{"id":2017,"date":"2007-10-08T12:57:12","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T19:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2007-10-08T12:59:06","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T19:59:06","slug":"the-odysseus-medal-dr-glenn-is-at-his-winningest-when-mr-kelman-is-nowhere-to-be-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2017\/the-odysseus-medal-dr-glenn-is-at-his-winningest-when-mr-kelman-is-nowhere-to-be-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odysseus Medal — Dr. Glenn is at his winningest when Mr. Kelman is nowhere to be seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet Dr. Glenn, CEO of a radically different venture-capital-funded real estate start-up. He’s charming, witty, self-deprecating, baldly transparent about his means, ends and motives. The people who saw him speak at Inman Connect were amazed at how engaging he could be.<\/p>\n

Why amazed? Because his reputation has suffered from the verbal savageries of his alter-ego, the coarse and flippant Mr. Kelman, a vulgarian who cannot come within shouting distance of a mainstream media maven without shoving one or more of his plentiful feet into his vast, cavernous mouth.<\/p>\n

It was Dr. Glenn who showed up at Guy Kawasaki’s weblog, posting the winning entry, Financial Models for Underachievers: Two Years of the Real Numbers of a Startup<\/a>, in this week’s Odysseus Medal competition:<\/p>\n

Startups face one primary challenge: To never run out of cash. So when projecting costs, we heeded Guy’s advice that “the three most powerful words you can utter at a board meeting are, ‘We beat projections.’” This convinced us to develop the worst possible financial model that could still be used to raise money.<\/p>\n

We’re glad we did. True underachievers, we’ve performed at or just a bit better than this worst-possible plan almost every month, raising revenue projections only when forced to in December 2006. We’ve been able to stick to our plan mostly because absurd assumptions in opposite directions cancelled one another out. As the real estate market tanks, we may not be so lucky in the future.<\/p>\n

When first putting together our financial model, we looked online to calibrate spending assumptions. So many people have blown venture capital, we thought, there must be a manual somewhere on how to do it, at what rate, avoiding which follies. We couldn’t find anything. So we took some wild guesses and figured we’d see how they turned out. And now two years later to the day that we built our first model, here are the projections and actual results. Hopefully, you can learn from our experiences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Say what you want about the cretinous Mr. Kelman — I know I do — this article is a fascinating glimpse into a side of real estate few of us Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Dr. Glenn, CEO of a radically different venture-capital-funded real estate start-up. He’s charming, witty, self-deprecating, baldly transparent about his means, ends and motives. The people who saw him speak at Inman Connect were amazed at how engaging he could be. Why amazed? Because his reputation has suffered from the verbal savageries of his alter-ego, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,6,5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blog-carnivals","7":"category-blogging","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-the-odysseus-medal","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1031,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1031\/redfincoms-ceo-glenn-kelman-what-if-the-parasites-had-to-eat-the-parasites\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":0},"title":"Redfin.com’s CEO Glenn Kelman: “What if the parasites had to eat the parasites?”","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been a Redfin week for us. Kris Berg recorded her podcast with Glenn Kelman last week and I spent much of my spare time this week dealing with it. Allen Butler dealt with the audio quality, and then Cathleen and I went through the recording, pulling out apposite quotes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2013,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2013\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Redfin's financial underbelly, the top-bazillion-bloggers and leftovers from last week's ActiveRain thunderstorm. These are just some of the topics addressed in this week's Odysseus Medal competition. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy. Voting runs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2542,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2542\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-17\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":2},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 18 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 78 posts. A lot of news, so a longer short-list. Upside: A boatload of fascinating reading. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2410,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2410\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":3},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That's a ton, but, even so, it's less than half of what we started with. Given that it's a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6907,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6907\/video-clips-of-redfincom-ceo-glenn-kelman-from-the-bloodhoundblog-unchained-preview-event-in-seattle\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":4},"title":"Video clips of Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman from the BloodhoundBlog Unchained preview event in Seattle","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Marlow Harris of 360Digest.com took these clips of Redfin's Glenn Kelman as he spoke with us Thursday afternoon at Zillow.com headquarters in Seattle: Technorati Tags: BloodhoundBlog Unchained, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, Redfin.com","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3154,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3154\/what-happens-when-a-lion-of-the-industry-sticks-his-head-in-the-lions-own-mouth-glenn-kelman-joins-bloodhoundblog-as-a-contributor\/","url_meta":{"origin":2017,"position":5},"title":"What happens when a lion of the industry sticks his head in the lion’s own mouth? 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